


Might Seem Like an Ordinary Night

by theswearingkind



Category: Brokeback Mountain
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-28 21:30:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/996926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theswearingkind/pseuds/theswearingkind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ennis is an old man when the news breaks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Might Seem Like an Ordinary Night

**Author's Note:**

> Although this was written for the gay marriage comment fic meme, it's not really marriage!fic. Title from "Carried Away," by George Strait, which forever and always will be my perfect Jack/Ennis song. Unbeta'd.

Junior got him a recliner to keep in his room when he moved in; all he’d thought he needed was a bed, but she insisted she was going to give him _a real proper set-up, Daddy,_ and so he got the bed plus some extra – a dresser, a recliner, even a little television. It gets mostly static, but one or two news stations come in just fine, and that suits him. Ennis always did like facts best.

Something about summers in Wyoming makes his bones ache – strange thing, but there it is: He can ride out the cold like no man his age, but that nighttime warm-weather air creeps into his joints, stirs up all the old bruises and won’t let him sleep. He’s spent many a night sitting up in that recliner, staring out the window or watching whatever’s on at that hour, grateful Junior’d shot down his protests with all the force of that stubborn streak he’d secretly loved in her as a girl.

It’s late enough that it’s early, but still nice for all that – nice enough Ennis could probably go out and count the stars if he wanted to. But he’s restless; he’s spent most of his life marinating in silence and gotten by just fine, but some nights a man wants the sound of a voice, any voice, to keep him company.

It must be a repeat of an earlier newscast – he knows the girl from channel eight’s ten o’clock, and she isn’t on this late usually. She’s talking about someone whose name Ennis barely recognizes, some crook in Washington, apparently, though that hardly narrows it down. He’s considering trying channel four, even though he doesn’t care for them much, when she switches topics, the screen cutting to a crowd of people, the sounds of their happy shouting filtering out from the speakers, filling the room.

“Tonight,” the girl’s voice reports, “the New York State legislature has voted to allow same-sex marriages, making New York the sixth state in the country to give gays and lesbians the right to marry.”

Something twists and catches in Ennis’s gut, a hard tug underneath his sternum like being jerked from the saddle.

“The bill passed in a close vote of 33-29 that split mostly along party lines, with four Republicans crossing the aisle to lend their support to the historic bill,” the girl’s voice continues, her tone bleached carefully neutral. “Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has made achieving marriage equality a priority during his time in office. He had this to say.”

The hall floor creaks a little outside his door, and there’s a light knock as the screen switches over to a dark-haired man standing behind a podium. “Daddy? You awake?” he hears, Junior’s voice worn a little rough as she pushes the door open. “I thought I heard something.” Her slippered feet pad toward his chair.

“You always was a light sleeper,” he answers. His voice sounds uneven in his ears, his mouth gone dry. “Sorry if I woke you.”

“It’s alright. What are you – ” She cuts off when a banner rolls across the bottom of the screen, big yellow letters spelling out _New York says yes to gay marriage_. “Oh,” she finishes softly.

“D’you – d’you see this? Can you believe it?” Ennis asks finally, hoping his voice sounds the way a man should sound.

“Oh, _God_ ,” Junior says, same soft voice, and Ennis feels that pull again, a pain he can’t place shuttering something closed in his chest. He opens his mouth to agree, but then she adds, almost like she doesn’t mean to, “Oh God, Kellan’s going to be so happy,” and Ennis whips his head around to face her because – because –

Kellan’s the family’s oldest; Junior and her husband hadn’t done it like him and her mama – they’d been smart about it, waiting a few years before they had him, another couple before Anna came along. Kellan’s a good boy, smart and quiet but not afraid to get his hands dirty. He went east for college and got a degree in some kind of law Ennis can’t pronounce; the whole family flew out for his graduation, the first time Ennis had ever been on a plane.

“What do you mean by that?” he asks then, when he finds the words, and watches the line of Junior’s back stiffen under her nightgown. “Why would – why does this matter to him?”

His girl isn’t one to get nervous, never has been, but she stumbles over her words when she tries to speak. “I – Daddy, I – ”

“Well?” he demands. “What do you mean by that?”

Junior shies under his words. Her eyes slip shut, and she takes a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have said that,” she answers eventually, opening her eyes and focusing that mild, steady gaze on him. “I didn’t mean to.”

“That don’t explain why – why this would matter to Kellan,” Ennis says, feeling something close to panic spreading in his veins.

“Daddy,” she says again.

“What are you trying to tell me, Alma?” he asks. “Are you – are you telling me my grandson – ?” He turns back to the television, where the picture flashes from shots of legislators in suits to people flooding into the streets, a tall building lit up with multicolored lights. Men and women, women and women. Men and men.

“Are you telling me – ?” he starts again, but loses his voice.

“I’m not telling you anything,” Junior says at last. “It’s not mine to tell. If you want to talk to Kellan, you can call him in the morning. It’s a Saturday, he won’t be going in for work.”

“My grandson – ” Ennis repeats, eyes still locked onto the screen.

“ – is your grandson,” Junior cuts him off, voice strong again and just a little warning. “He’s your grandson.”

On the screen, the local anchor switches smoothly to a story about the beginning of the county high school’s gym renovation, like there’s nothing else to say.

“I’m going back to bed now,” Junior says after a minute’s silence. “It’s late, you should try to sleep.” She crosses to the far side of the room, switching the set off, and the room goes dark.

She’s almost back out the door before he manages, “Don’t you – you don’t – mind?”

She meets his eyes, and in the faint light streaming in through the outside window, her face is – not sad, but something like it. He always took care to keep this thing as far away from his girls as he could, but if he didn’t know better, he’d think it was pity. “No, Daddy,” she says finally, voice quiet but unbending, like he remembers it being when she was a little girl. “I’ve never minded.”

Ennis has to turn away.

“Night, then, Daddy,” he hears her say. He doesn’t reply.

Ennis sits in the dark a long while; there was a time when he caught sunrise from this side almost every day, but it’s been years. It’s almost daybreak by the time he finally gets up from his chair, walking stiffly across the room to his dresser and bending, with some difficulty, to open the bottom drawer; it sticks a little, always has, which makes it good for keeping things he doesn’t want someone else to find. The shirts are in there, folded safe one within the other, and the postcard in a frame to keep it from going yellow, and a bottle of whiskey Junior doesn’t know about that he keeps around for nights like this.

His eyes are burning but his hands are steady as he takes out the postcard and sets it up on his dresser, places the shirts carefully beside it. Ennis unscrews the bottle, that sour-rich whiskey smell filtering out into the room like a memory, and pours a shot into the bottle cap, raising it to the picture in the frame, Brokeback as it was and probably still is. Light is breaking outside the window; with a care foreign to his rancher’s hands, he places his palm on the shirts like he’s swearing on the Bible and closes his eyes, lets himself see Jack Twist before him, blue eyes and buck teeth, singing wide-out by a campfire, whooping at the sky in the full joy of lust and friendship and all the rest.

“I swear,” he says then, out loud, “Jack, I swear,” then raises the whiskey to his lips and tosses it back in one swallow. It burns like a promise as it goes down.


End file.
